dirty boy

Donning my standard summer apparel of cream cotton jacket and trousers, I go into work. Midway through my first consultation I notice to my horror that the entire right side of my clothes is spattered with cloying, almost black, mud. I manage to get the patient out of the room fairly easily and spend the next 20 minutes sponging it off, spot by smear, with a dampened towel. Fortunately I am eventually able to remove enough of it to be fairly presentable. But I find the whole episode quite unreal and almost dreamlike in its intensity, and the sense of unreality persists for the rest of the morning. I cannot for the life of me account for what happened. Then an idea occurs. Was it on the roll-up door of my garage; But if not that, then what?

I go home for lunch. But first I have to go out the back to inspect the door, but it is soon apparent this wasn't the source of the mud: it seems clean enough. So just how this bizarre event came about remains a mystery to me. The symbolism, however, is not lost on me, and I squirm with this realization.